If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Hi All,
I received a message from Google Adsense regarding the following:
Google ads may not be placed on pages with adult or mature content. This includes, but is not limited to, pages with images or videos containing:
• Strategically covered nudity
• Sheer or see-through clothing
• Lewd or provocative poses
• Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches
I realize that this may be a hassle, but please adhere to this. If you are using an avatar that fits this description then please change it. If you're aware of a page that contains such content, then please let us know.
This isn't meant to curb or restrict free speech, but is a measure that needs to be taken.

You may notice that some threads now show a red "Warning" prefix. This indicates that an in-thread warning has been issued for some reason (usually because the thread got out of hand at some point). Infractions issued in a thread where a warning has already been issued WILL result in points so it is highly recommended that thread participants choose their responses carefully.

Announcement

Collapse

Forum Rules - You must read(Updated!)

DISCLAIMER

You agree to NOT use this site or its affiliated sites, services you may have access to as a result of being a member here (subscriber or otherwise), to post items (images, textual material, etc.) that are pornographic in nature, illegal in the United States and/or the country you reside in, support or encourage illegal activities (e.g., terrorism), advertise for your own personal profit, or send unsolicited messages (i.e. SPAM) to members or non-members.

AND

You agree that if any clause or component of this document is found to not be legally binding in a court of law of proper jurisdiction then the remainder of this document shall remain fully binding and in full force.

AND

You agree to NOT hold Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. (makers of the forum software), uspoliticsonline.com, sites affiliated with uspoliticsonline.com, its administrators, its moderators, others associated with its operation, and its owners liable for any and all of the following (in whole or in part):

Personal insults/attacks by other members.
The content posted by other members, whether directed at you personally or a label/classification you associate with. This includes remarks you consider to be libelous or slanderous in any way.
Any financial or time loss due to your participation here or as a result of something you read at this site, including posts/PMs by other members and feature(s)/software available at the domain uspoliticsonline.com.
The dissemination of any personal information about you as a result of either your negligence (e.g. staying logged into a computer that others have access to) or willingness to post such information on a public and or private forum, private message or chat box. This includes using your real name or other details that could allow other members and/or the general public to determine your true identity. You are prohibited from using your real name on these forums, either as your username or in posts / PMs you write.

FORUM RULES, IN ADDITION TO THE DISCLAIMER

1. These rules apply to all sections of USPOL, including public and private forums, blogs, and visitor messages.

2. You cannot attack and/or personally insult someone. You cannot bait other forum members; this includes referring to posters by derogatory terms. Please, remain courteous and respectful to all forum members at all times. You agree to take responsibility for reporting such posts when you come across them. Please, use the ignore feature if need be. Any member who intentionally and continually posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response, or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, may be regarded as a “troll” by staff, and have their account suspended or banned.

3. You cannot harass (sexually or otherwise) other members. This includes malicious, slanderous, or defamatory comments. If you are not sure if something you write is inappropriate or not then don't say it. Err on the side of caution.

4. Copying and Pasting Articles, and Starting New Threads. You cannot simply cut and paste in posts or when starting threads. You MUST provide the identifying information (source, author, date, and URL). You must also offer some original thoughts along with the cut and paste. You may copy and paste an excerpt or series of excerpts from the article. Excerpts really shouldn’t be more then a paragraph or two. Furthermore, if you use images or other copyrighted material in your posts or signature you must have permission of the copyright holder unless you know for a fact that the image is in the public domain. In addition:

a. It must include the identifying information; e.g., where available, the author, the publication, the date, the URL.b. The member must offer some context, including: How did you hear of this article? What is your opinion? Why is it important to you? Why should it be important to forum readers? The more context you provide, the more you assist others in gauging the excerpted information's significance.c. You may copy and paste an excerpt or series of excerpts, not the whole thing or even the majority of the whole thing to encourage people to read the entire article.

A violation of any of the above will result in the deletion or closing of the post or thread and could earn you a warning or suspension. If you have any questions concering any of the above please PM a moderator and we will be happy to clarify.

5. You cannot post the same thing in multiple forums. You must not open similar threads about the same or a similar topic. You cannot spam the board or send unsolicited messages to members via PM, email or any other means.

6. Do not post off-topic. You cannot derail a thread with off topic posts.

7. You cannot shout in posts. This includes posting in all CAPS, bold, lIkE tHiS, and extra large font. Posts should also be one color, although you may use an additional color for highlighting ideas you wish to address.

8. You may not alter quotes in a way that misrepresents what was originally said.

9. Multiple accounts are not allowed. If you are found to have more than one account all accounts will be permanently terminated.

10. You cannot have a user name, avatar, signature, or post images that are deliberately offensive. That includes the display of overly explicit or graphic images that may not be suitable for minors.

11. Signatures can not have more than three lines of text, with a font size no larger than "4", and no more than two font colors. Images in signatures cannot be any larger than 800 pixels wide x 200 pixels tall. Animated images are not allowed.

12. You are prohibited from taking any action to disturb the use of the services by others, distribute material that contains viruses, spyware or any other malicious code or harmful programs. This includes interfering with the working of the network, attempts to gain unauthorized access to a service or other computer systems that are part of the site or any other site, by use of the available services.

13. Discussion of moderation actions in public and/or private forums is not permitted. Moderation actions include warnings, suspensions and the editing or deletion of posts. If a member has a concern about a moderation action, he or she is invited to address it with the board staff via Private Message. This rule exists to protect the privacy of all posters with regards to disciplinary action. The moderator team will never publicly discuss the warnings/suspensions of any posters, and we ask that you return the favor, whether about yourself or another poster. Posting about moderation actions in the public forums constitutes a violation. You are free to discuss a moderation action via Private Message with the moderator involved, but you may not harass or abuse the moderators (as already specified in the forum rules). In practical terms, this means that once a moderator tells you his or her decision is final, no further PMs about that moderation action are permitted. If you have a concern about a moderation action, you are free to appeal to a Forum Administrator via Private Message. You may only discuss moderator activities or discussion of moderation with staff member if you chose to private message and are not under any circumstances allowed to use the PM function to forward or promote moderator discussion in regards to specific forum action, amongst other regular members. Administrators do reserve the right to read said PMs and may do so ; if that results in discovery of messaging between posters of such moderator discussion then it will lead to the same violation being received for discussing said moderator actions on the forum. If you receive a message to the effect of having been given moderator information, please report it to a member of staff. Engaging back in that discussion with the original violator will earn you just as stiff a sanction.

14. Do not ignore moderators or administrators. Do not repost something a moderator or administrator has deleted. You cannot have moderators or administrators on your ignore list.

15. Only post in English. Short passages in foreign languages may be acceptable if its use seems helpful for the ongoing discussion and when there is no indication of a potential violation of the forum rules. Always provide a translation into English in such cases. In case of doubt, the incident will be regarded as a violation, no matter of the actual meaning of the foreign language text.

16. The use of words/comments etc. written by other posters, without approval of the poster in your personal signature is not allowed nor are references, by name, to other posters allowed.

17. Please pay attention to announcements by Forum staff that will be found in the "Welcome! / News & Announcements" forum from time to time.

18. Use of "liar", "lies", "lying", etc. Accusing someone of being a "liar" or similar accusations towards other posters will generally be regarded as implying an insult and therewith as a violation of the forum rules. "I question the validity of your statement because...", "That's not the truth" or "you are wrong about that" are sufficient for any decent discussion if you want to disagree with somebody's assertions.

19. Thread opening restriction for new members. In order to control SPAM, new members must have moderator approval to start their own threads.

20. Thread titles must relate to the discussion within. Do not make misleading titles, or titles such as "Guess what..." or "You'll never believe this...". Members need to be able to identify the general gist of the thread via the title. Profanity in thread titles is not permitted.

21. Forum members are instructed to use forum tools and abilities for their intended purposes and no other. If members identify a forum glitch or weakness of any kind that allows you to see or do something you know you shouldn't, please report it. Being aware of any unintended access to the Forum and failing to take appropriate steps to notify staff of said access issues, will create a presumption of seeking to take advantage of the issue, will result in either account suspension, or banishment.

22. Any link to a site that contains graphic content, must contain a warning describing what a person might reasonably expect to view if they click on said link. No graphic pictures are to be posted on the Forum.

23. Threats or advocations of violence toward a public figure, or member of the Forum, will not be tolerated. Conversation about revolution or the like is not prohibited by this rule; directly calling for violence is, eg “It's time to kill every <redacted> that voted for the bill,” is not permitted.

24. Accounts with no posts will be deleted after 30 days. Inactive accounts with low post histories may be deleted after one year.

25. Private forums are something offered to members that decide to contribute directly to this site via donations. These donations help immensely in keeping this site up and running. Private forums are designed to allow the contributing member discuss whatever he/she wants to and to have the power to direct that discussion in whatever way he/she chose. They were not designed nor are they intended for simply talking trash about members that don't have access to the forum. While the targeted members cannot see the forum or the comments, it creates a negative atmosphere that really isn't necessary. If you want to totally rip apart ideas, ideologies, political parties, etc. that is fine. We simply ask that you don't use the private forums as a means to attack other members that aren't privy to such comments. It is difficult enough to have a political discussion forum because the discussion of politics is inherently heated as people are so passionate about their beliefs...the ones that take the time to come to such a site in the first place at least. The idea of private forums is so people of similar political persuasions can discuss whatever they want without fear of being attacked. Nonetheless, we hope that a certain level of maturity would foster itself within such an arena and not simply lend itself to a bashing forum.

Private Forums are governed by all of the above Forum rules. In addition:

Private forums that essentially become abandoned homes will be subject to deletion, donation or reorganization. Just like elsewhere in life, clubs sometimes lose their vitality and purpose for a myriad of reasons. If it becomes clear that a private forum has clearly lost its vitality and nobody is going to really use it anymore, owners are advised to consider whether to reuse the forum for something new and productive rather than let them linger or notify the Administration that the forum should be rearranged for other purposes, closed, merged with other compatible private forums, donated to others for new purposes, etc. Do not be concerned that your forum must be a membership and post count race with others to avoid falling under this policy; the question is whether your forum has actual vitality instead of being 'brain dead.'

Additionally, private forums may only be owned by subscribed members in the Platinum or Diamond categories.

Should the owner of a private forum be banned, quit USPOL or otherwise abandon the forum the PF will be transferred to another owner or closed.

Propriety of private forums. Administration staff will determine the desirability of a proposed private forum and enact any conditions upon it to ensure its purpose is productive.

Any and all instances of sharing accounts by allowing someone else to log in under their own account so they can see into private forums for which they are otherwise not permitted to access, will be deemed violation of the double account rule and all caught doing so will be permanently banned.

Relaying private forum posts and information to other posters who are not members of the particular private forum for any negative or destructive purpose (eg mean-spirited gossip, fueling interpersonal disputes, etc), is not permitted, and will constitute a violation of the Forum rules.

For purposes of monitoring USPOL Terms of Service Administrative staff (not Moderators) will have access to Private Forums.

All Private Forums must have at least one active Administrator as a member for purposes of handling issues which cannot be addressed through moderation permissions.

Discussion of moderation activities is prohibited on the open site and is likewise prohibited in Private Forums.

26. The administrators and moderators reserve the right to edit and/or delete a post,and/or close a thread, and/or delete a thread at any time if of the opinion that the post is too obscene, inappropriate, or the discussion has run its course.

27. 'Back seat moderating' is not allowed. If you take issue with another poster's contribution to the forum, you're welcome to report any posts you think are out of line, but you should not bring it up publicly within the forum.

28. Images in posts (whether embedded or hot linked) must be reasonable in size. 800x800 should be considered a good rule of thumb. Excessively large images make it difficult for users on mobile devices to load pages. If necessary please simply link to very large images using the URL tags. In addition, the following images are not permitted (including, but not limited to pages with images or videos containing):

Strategically covered nudity

Sheer or see-through clothing

Lewd or provocative poses

Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches

29. Any solicitation or communication involving sports betting / gambling / online casinos / bookies and or internet based card or slot machine systems or sites will lead to all said content being physically removed from the site and server, and will lead to any and or all parties involved being permanently removed and banned from the site to the farthest extent possible. This includes any links to any form of bookmaker, casino, any type of game or match or event where money transfers on the outcome or link of any sort to wire act violations and or anything in violation of either the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act, Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, or the Federal wire Act. This applies not only to the open forum but all and or any chat rooms, articles, private messages and or private forums. All content that violates this rule will be deleted, without notice.

CONSEQUENCES

Failure to comply with any of the forum rules may result in your posts being edited or deleted and/or your account being temporarily or permanently banned from the forums. U.S. Politics Online uses a warning system that generates an automated Private Message to members when they are in violation of Forum rules. The decision to issue a warning is left to the discretion of the moderator or administrator handling the violation. If a member does not agree with an action taken by a moderator, they can appeal to an administrator after seeking clarification from the moderator who issued the warning/infraction and appealing to them in the first instance. Members MAY NOT harass a moderator or administrator by sending excessive PMs when they are discussing an appeal.

Violations are assigned a point value. Points are valid for 30 days. When a members earns 10 points, their account will be automatically suspended: five (5) days for a first suspension; ten (10) days for a second suspension; and twenty (20) days for a third suspension. If a member incurs an additional 10 points after having served three periods of suspension, then they will be permanently banned from the Forum.

The administrators and moderators also bear the right to issue warnings, temporarily suspend or ban posters for continued trolling or other serious misconduct (eg. professional spamming) even if the poster has not yet reached the maximum warning points or suspensions level. Other options if the above consequences do not seem adequate include placing the member in a moderation queue, which means all posts will have to be approved before they are posted to the board.

PRIVACY POLICY

All information obtained by the end user via the registration process is for internal purposes only and will not be sold to or shared with any third parties. However, if the end user participates in illegal activities and a court of proper jurisdiction orders U.S. Politics Online to release certain information about said user then we will act according to the law. Furthermore, no information will be released on threat of a lawsuit, attempted or actual intimidation, or due to any other reason except as notated in the first sentence of this paragraph. Nonetheless, keep in mind that the information we do have is very limited and generally only consists of the IP address a member uses.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

U.S. Politics Online offers several subscription plans to help cover the operational costs of the site. As a thank you for your donation, you will receive special added benefits meant to enhance your U.S. Politics Online experience. Plans vary in price, starting at only $0.05/day, and benefits vary with the price. Benefits include ability to go straight to new posts, to search the forum, larger avatar, private forums, invisible mode, photo gallery, email, web hosting, and no advertisement banners. Please, click here for more details.

The far-left ThinkProgress reports that scientists have finally proven that the theory of man-made Global Warming is a total hoax.
Of course, no one will admit it, but that is exactly what has happened.

Yes, you read that correctly, three million — million — years ago CO2 levels on Earth were the same as they are today, but there is one major difference between three million years ago and today…

Three million years ago, we humans were not driving cars or eating the meat that requires cow farts; we weren’t barbecuing or refusing to recycle or building factories; there was no Industrial Age, no plastic, no air conditioning, no electricity, no lumber mills, no consumerism, no aerosols.

In fact, three million years ago, there were probably no human beings on Earth, at least not human in the way we use that term today. And yet…

CO2 levels were the same then as they are now…

Hmmm…?

But I thought humans warmed the planet? That’s the hustle we’ve been sold for three decades now — you know, that WE are the problem.

We have also been told the problem is DEFINITELY NOT a billions-year-old planet running through cycles where the temperature might fluctuate a bit. Oh, no, that could never be it — so stop saying that could be, you Denier.

Well, what about the Ice Age that occurred thousands and thousands of years before the Industrial Age.

Shut up, Denier.

And yet…

According to the study, scientists also discovered that during this period of Global Warming “there were no ice sheets covering either Greenland or West Antarctica, and much of the East Antarctic ice sheet was gone.”

How is this possible 2,999,971 years before Arnold Schwarzenegger bought his Hummer?

It gets worse:

Temperatures were up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer globally, at least double that at the poles, and sea levels were some 20 meters (65 feet) higher.

How is that possible 2,999,945 years before Americans moved to the suburbs and lit up the charcoal grills?

Naturally, even in the face of a study that totally debunks the whole concept of man-made Global Warming, ThinkProgress is sticking with that hoax but is also forced to concede the following:

The good news is that the Earth does not warm instantly, and mile-thick ice sheets melt even more slowly. So the temperature rise will take several decades, and tens of feet of sea level rise will take hundreds and hundreds of years.

But-but-but-but Alexandria Ocasio-Crazy told me we only have 12 years!

And then ThinkProgress drops this anti-science stink bomb:

That means the choices we make now can affect the rate of rise and determine whether we blow past 65 feet of sea level rise to beyond 200 feet.

Because, because, because Orange Man Bad:

Even worse, the climate policy agenda President Donald Trump is pushing — actions that include rolling back U.S. laws that reduce carbon pollution and abandoning the Paris climate agreement — would lock us in to such high CO2 levels, sea levels would rise a foot per decade in just a few decades.

No, actually, what this study proves is that there is nothing we can do to stop the Earth’s naturally occurring climate cycles. Even the worst of the worst, even the most maniacal pushing the Global Warming Hoax admit that, at best, we can only cool the planet a couple of degrees, which will do next to nothing if the planet is determined to again warm itself by seven degrees, as we now know it did 2,999,998 years before the Bad Orange Man approved a couple of pipelines.

The far-left ThinkProgress reports that scientists have finally proven that the theory of man-made Global Warming is a total hoax.
Of course, no one will admit it, but that is exactly what has happened.

Yes, you read that correctly, three million — million — years ago CO2 levels on Earth were the same as they are today, but there is one major difference between three million years ago and today…

Three million years ago, we humans were not driving cars or eating the meat that requires cow farts; we weren’t barbecuing or refusing to recycle or building factories; there was no Industrial Age, no plastic, no air conditioning, no electricity, no lumber mills, no consumerism, no aerosols.

In fact, three million years ago, there were probably no human beings on Earth, at least not human in the way we use that term today. And yet…

CO2 levels were the same then as they are now…

Hmmm…?

But I thought humans warmed the planet? That’s the hustle we’ve been sold for three decades now — you know, that WE are the problem.

We have also been told the problem is DEFINITELY NOT a billions-year-old planet running through cycles where the temperature might fluctuate a bit. Oh, no, that could never be it — so stop saying that could be, you Denier.

Well, what about the Ice Age that occurred thousands and thousands of years before the Industrial Age.

Shut up, Denier.

And yet…

According to the study, scientists also discovered that during this period of Global Warming “there were no ice sheets covering either Greenland or West Antarctica, and much of the East Antarctic ice sheet was gone.”

How is this possible 2,999,971 years before Arnold Schwarzenegger bought his Hummer?

It gets worse:

Temperatures were up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer globally, at least double that at the poles, and sea levels were some 20 meters (65 feet) higher.

How is that possible 2,999,945 years before Americans moved to the suburbs and lit up the charcoal grills?

Naturally, even in the face of a study that totally debunks the whole concept of man-made Global Warming, ThinkProgress is sticking with that hoax but is also forced to concede the following:

The good news is that the Earth does not warm instantly, and mile-thick ice sheets melt even more slowly. So the temperature rise will take several decades, and tens of feet of sea level rise will take hundreds and hundreds of years.

But-but-but-but Alexandria Ocasio-Crazy told me we only have 12 years!

And then ThinkProgress drops this anti-science stink bomb:

That means the choices we make now can affect the rate of rise and determine whether we blow past 65 feet of sea level rise to beyond 200 feet.

Because, because, because Orange Man Bad:

Even worse, the climate policy agenda President Donald Trump is pushing — actions that include rolling back U.S. laws that reduce carbon pollution and abandoning the Paris climate agreement — would lock us in to such high CO2 levels, sea levels would rise a foot per decade in just a few decades.

No, actually, what this study proves is that there is nothing we can do to stop the Earth’s naturally occurring climate cycles. Even the worst of the worst, even the most maniacal pushing the Global Warming Hoax admit that, at best, we can only cool the planet a couple of degrees, which will do next to nothing if the planet is determined to again warm itself by seven degrees, as we now know it did 2,999,998 years before the Bad Orange Man approved a couple of pipelines.

“Large storm events have proven to be costly in the past,” the statement said. “We hope to get approval on the new proposal as soon as possible.”

The sea wall plan had attracted attention because the Trump Organization’s representatives had used the threat of rising seawater from climate change as a rationale for building it, even though Mr. Trump has referred to climate change as a hoax. Mr. Trump’s golf resort, which he bought in 2014, is near the village of Doonbeg, in County Clare, on Ireland’s west coast.

Of all President-elect Donald J. Trump’s rivals over the past year, the tiny narrow-mouthed whorl snail must be the smallest. Sometimes, though, less is more.

Mr. Trump’s real estate organization had planned to build a long sea wall off the Irish coast to protect its golf course in County Clare. But the wall faced opposition from environmental groups who said they feared that it would threaten the two-millimeter-long whorl snail, or vertigo angustior, which lives in the area, as well as coastal dunes. Both are protected by European Union rules.

In a statement, the Trump Organization said it would be submitting a new application later this month.

“Large storm events have proven to be costly in the past,” the statement said. “We hope to get approval on the new proposal as soon as possible.”

The sea wall plan had attracted attention because the Trump Organization’s representatives had used the threat of rising seawater from climate change as a rationale for building it, even though Mr. Trump has referred to climate change as a hoax. Mr. Trump’s golf resort, which he bought in 2014, is near the village of Doonbeg, in County Clare, on Ireland’s west coast.

The greatest "tell" for non-scientists evaluating the likelihood that the anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud is that instead of critically examining the facts, warmists try to silence skeptics, with some of them even demanding jail for the thought-crime of questioning their unproven theory.

So thorough has been the pressure to keep the fraud going and keep the billions of dollars a year in research funds flowing to universities and other research institutions pushing the party line that skeptics are under threat of firing — and some have been fired.

That's why this news from Australia is so important. Via the Guardian:

James Cook University is considering its legal options after the federal circuit court ruled it had unlawfully sacked a professor who had criticised scientific research about the climate change impact on the Great Barrier Reef.

Peter Ridd, who was the head of the physics department at the institution from 2009 until 2016, took legal action against his dismissal.

Judge Salvatore Vasta ruled on Tuesday the 17 findings made by the university, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure, the final censure and the termination of Ridd's employment were all unlawful.

Judge Astra shied away from the implications of his ruling, focusing on technicalities:

"Some have thought that this trial was about freedom of speech and intellectual freedom. Media reports have considered that this trial was about silencing persons with controversial or unpopular views," Vasta said in his judgement.

"Rather, this trial was purely and simply about the proper construction of a clause in an enterprise agreement."

Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That provides the actual decision. And he cites Professor Ridd's comments on his GoFundMe page:

Dear All,

Excellent news.

My lawyers have told me that the judge handed down his decision and we seem to have won on all counts.

It all happened very quickly and we had no warning , and because I live almost a thousand miles from the court, I was not able to be there. I have still not seen the written judgement and will update you all when I have that information.

Needless to say, I have to thank all 2500 of you, and all the bloggers, and the IPA and my legal team who donated much of their time free for this success. But mostly I want to thank my dearest Cheryl, who quite by chance has been my bestest friend for exactly 40 years today. It just shows what a team effort can achieve.

The next chapter of this saga must now be written by the JCU Council which is the governing body of JCU. What will they do about the VC and SDVC who were responsible for bringing the university into disrepute, not just in North Queensland, but also around the world. JCU crushed dissent, crushed academic freedom and tried to crush my spirit with their appalling behaviour. They only failed because I had your support. But if the JCU council does not act, they will be complicit in this disgraceful episode.

Attention must now focus on the JCU council.

I will update you shortly when I have more information, but for now I certainly have a spring in my step.

kind regards

Peter

Help spread the word!

In the end, who won the argument: Galileo or those who sought the suppress his theory of the planetary orbits around the Sun, not the Earth?

îä îëéìåú äçãùåú?

Climate change is not. Anyone alive longer than a few days, is aware that the climate changes from day to day.

But we cannot silence people who question fraud, we just can't.

It's not legal OR moral.

I would say that significant human impact on existing climate change has yet to be scientifically established (not a single climate model has consistently and accurately predicted future changes).

That said, even IF it was a firmly established scientific fact, that does not mean it is a BAD thing. The real problem with this debate is that it treats as scientific questions, things which are actually economic questions. Once you dispell with the truly idiotic, hyperbolic, secular-apocalyptic predictions that we are making the planet uninhabitable, even the most significant predictions of changes to global climate are not proven to be, overall, bad for mankind. The problem is the other side starts from a faulty premise, and confirmation bias leads them to only look at the economic side of the impact supporting their faulty assumption. We have all heard it, over, and over, some version of the quote "we are pumping all this Carbon into the atmosphere, and that can't be a good thing". Why not? I could just as easily say "we are pumping all these chemicals and drugs into people's bodies, and that can't be a good thing"...of course the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary, given that much of the massive increase in human life expectancy is due to all those things, so yes, it CAN be a good thing overall.

There will be some negative costs, and some positive benefits to climate change (man-made or not), the first question (which the other side begs and prejudges the answer by way of the aforementioned faulty assumption) is whether it will be a NET positive or negative. If it is to be a net positive, then we are truly wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in opportunity costs even talking about it. If it is a net negative, we are having the wrong discussion. The other side immediately assumes that there WILL be a net negative impact, and that means we MUST do whatever we can to prevent that. WRONG. The question is whether the net present economic value of the efforts that would need to be taken to prevent it (even it is even possible to do so) would be greater or less than the net present economic value of what it would take to simply adapt (to put in the most extreme example, would we be better off economically in a hundred years if we do what is necessary from stopping the coast lines from moving further inland, or instead just having people move further inland).

Bottom line, even IF they are correct on the cause and effect of man's Carbon emissions, their policy proposals are not justified.

îä îëéìåú äçãùåú?

I would say that significant human impact on existing climate change has yet to be scientifically established (not a single climate model has consistently and accurately predicted future changes).

That said, even IF it was a firmly established scientific fact, that does not mean it is a BAD thing. The real problem with this debate is that it treats as scientific questions, things which are actually economic questions. Once you dispell with the truly idiotic, hyperbolic, secular-apocalyptic predictions that we are making the planet uninhabitable, even the most significant predictions of changes to global climate are not proven to be, overall, bad for mankind. The problem is the other side starts from a faulty premise, and confirmation bias leads them to only look at the economic side of the impact supporting their faulty assumption. We have all heard it, over, and over, some version of the quote "we are pumping all this Carbon into the atmosphere, and that can't be a good thing". Why not? I could just as easily say "we are pumping all these chemicals and drugs into people's bodies, and that can't be a good thing"...of course the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary, given that much of the massive increase in human life expectancy is due to all those things, so yes, it CAN be a good thing overall.

There will be some negative costs, and some positive benefits to climate change (man-made or not), the first question (which the other side begs and prejudges the answer by way of the aforementioned faulty assumption) is whether it will be a NET positive or negative. If it is to be a net positive, then we are truly wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in opportunity costs even talking about it. If it is a net negative, we are having the wrong discussion. The other side immediately assumes that there WILL be a net negative impact, and that means we MUST do whatever we can to prevent that. WRONG. The question is whether the net present economic value of the efforts that would need to be taken to prevent it (even it is even possible to do so) would be greater or less than the net present economic value of what it would take to simply adapt (to put in the most extreme example, would we be better off economically in a hundred years if we do what is necessary from stopping the coast lines from moving further inland, or instead just having people move further inland).

Bottom line, even IF they are correct on the cause and effect of man's Carbon emissions, their policy proposals are not justified.

No they aren't.

And they never were/have been.

Alarmists have been out there yelling about how bad for Earth humans are for a very long time.

We had the population bomb idea.

We had the coming ice age idea - which was probably our fault too.

Now we have the man cause global warming ... changed to "climate change" idea.

It’s the ultimate in hubris to believe climate revolves solely around human activity. Yet politicians, rather admitting the obvious, that we don’t know far more than we do know, blame an ever-changing climate on everything from flatulent cows to processed meats.

Much like the Russian collusion hoax, the left creates a narrative to fit their agenda, putting conclusions before research and discovery. Instead they would be better served by applying the scientific method of observing, formulating a hypothesis, testing it against observations, modifying and refining the hypothesis, until after extensive testing it accurately predicts future events.

Otherwise it’s just more blather and fear mongering, just as we heard for over two years with Russian collusion fantasies that turned out to be nothing. Just as late April snow, in the eyes of the left, is further evidence of a warming planet.

The last thing we expect mid-spring is snow. Yet that’s just what we have. As the Weather Channel reports, “It may be late April, but Winter Storm Xyler will make you forget that it is spring in the Midwest this weekend as it is expected to bring some unusually heavy late season snowfall.”

Snow is heading to New York as well, despite the state’s all-out effort to combat global warming by attempting to ban plastic straws and now hot dogs. From the New York Post, “Upstate NY may get up to 3 inches of snow this weekend.”

Across the country in Denver, the weather won’t be much different, as The Denver Channel reports, “Mild through the weekend, cold, rain and snow next week!” What’s going on? I thought the planet was heating up, with melting icecaps, rising sea levels, and less than 12 years before the earth burns to a crisp?

We have been hearing this song and dance for several decades now. The global warming chicken littles keep telling us that snow is a thing of the past and we had better get used to it, along with a warming planet.

In 2000, British newspaper The Independent ran this headline, “Snowfalls are just a thing of the past.” In 2014, The New York Times ran a sequel headline, “The end of snow?”

Yet here we are, at the end of April, planting our gardens and facing snow in much of the country. If this is evidence of global warming, then Bernie Sanders’s popularity is evidence that the Democrat Party has shifted to the right. Good luck selling that.

One important factor always neglected by the climate warriors is the Sun, a ball of fire a million times larger than the Earth, the source of life on Earth, as well as destruction if the fires ever were extinguished, or expanded. If we were a few million miles closer to or further from the Sun, life on Earth would cease to exist. Just look at Venus and Mars, neighboring planets either too hot or too cold, respectively, for life as we know it.

Even the Earth’s tilt toward or away from the Sun is enough to cause our seasons, with large temperature variations and the difference between food production or not. Yet climate warriors ignore the Sun, instead focusing on human activity, driving SUV’s, flying in airplanes, and running our air conditioners.

Sunspots, according to the National Weather Service, “Are areas where the magnetic field is about 2,500 times stronger than Earth's, much higher than anywhere else on the Sun.” Sunspots are quite large, about the size of the Earth, and are several thousand degrees cooler than the surrounding Sun surface.

Sunspots lead to solar flares, surface explosions which “release as much energy as a billion megatons of TNT.” These flares emit x-rays and magnetic fields which blast the Earth as geomagnetic storms, disrupting power grids and satellites, and warming the Earth.

Sunspots are not random but instead follow an 11-year cycle, from a minimum to a maximum. Sometimes the cycles last longer, for unknown reasons, with a 70-year period of near zero sunspot activity from 1645 to 1715, called the Maunder Minimum, or Little Ice Age. Enough of science class, how is this relevant now?

As reported by the Express, we are now entering one of these 11 year cycles as the Sun enters a solar minimum. As they report,

During a solar maximum, the Sun gives off more heat and is littered with sunspots. Less heat in a solar minimum is due to a decrease in magnetic waves.

Fewer magnetic waves equates to the Sun being slightly cooler, and experts are expecting the solar minimum to deepen even further before it gets warmer.

With less magnetic waves coming from the Sun, cosmic rays find it easier to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere and are more noticeable to scientists.

While cosmic rays have little effect on our planet, one of the reasons scientists monitor them is to see when the Sun has entered a solar minimum.

Now, with cosmic rays at an all-time high, scientists know the Sun is about to enter a prolonged cooling period.

The bottom line is that decreasing sunspot activity translates to a cooling planet, contrary to the doomsday non-scientific pronouncements of Al Gore and Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. Sunspot activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, but as noted above, there may be other perhaps longer cycles as occurred in the 1600s leading to a 70-year mini ice age.

Then there are even longer climatic cycles, with real ice ages occurring every 100,000 years. These glaciations end with a 10,000 year inter-glacial warming period, the current such warming period soon ending, as distinguished scientist S. Fred Singer wrote in American Thinker.

Clearly there are factors at play in climate cycles that we barely understand and certainly cannot control. Some play out in shorter time spans, which we as humans can observe directly. Others are on a far longer and grander scale than human existence, much less our individual life spans, which are merely the blink of an eye by comparison.

Aside from solar activity and sunspots, there are volcanic eruptions emitting more greenhouse gas per eruption than years of worldwide human activity. What other forces are at play? That’s for scientists to discover. Our solar system is a mere speck in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is another speck in the vast universe.

This solar variable was neatly described by the Serbian scientist, Milutin Milankovitch, in 1938. There are three major components of the Earth's orbit about the sun that contribute to changes in our climate. First, the Earth's spin on its axis is wobbly, much like a spinning top that starts to wobble after it slows down. This wobble amounts to a variation of up to 23.5 degrees to either side of the axis. The amount of tilt in the Earth's rotation affects the amount of sunlight striking the different parts of the globe. The greater the tilt, the stronger the difference in seasons (i.e., more tilt equals sharper differences between summer and winter temperatures). The range of motion in the tilt (from left-of-center to right-of-center and back again) takes place over a period of 41,000 years. As a result of a wobble in the Earth's spin, the position of the Earth on its elliptical path changes, relative to the time of year. This phenomenon is called the precession of equinoxes. The cycle of equinox precession takes 23,000 years to complete. In the growth of continental ice sheets, summer temperatures are probably more important than winter.

Finally, the shape of Earth's orbit also changes. At one extreme, the orbit is more circular, so that each season receives about the same amount of insolation. At the other extreme, the orbital ellipse is stretched longer, exaggerating the differences between seasons. The eccentricity of Earth's orbit also proceeds through a long cycle, which takes 100,000 years. Major glacial events in the Quaternary have coincided when the phases of axial tilt, precession of equinoxes and eccentricity of orbit are all lined up to give the northern hemisphere the least amount of summer insolation.

The last major convergence of factors giving us maximum summer warmth occurred 11,000 years ago, at the transition between the last glaciation and the current interglacial, the Holocene. During the late Pleistocene, the Rocky Mountain regions of Canada and the regions farther west were almost engulfed in the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, while most of Canada east of the Rockies and the north-central and northeastern United States were covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The divide between the two ice sheets lay east of the Rockies, with the two ice bodies meeting near the U.S.-Canadian border in eastern Montana. The Laurentide ice sheet is thought to have been as much as two miles thick at the center.

Another educational read on ice ages and the natural occurences of changing climate, that have nothing to do with our relatively minute existence.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

.....

For the Cenozoic period, which began about 70 million years ago and continues today, evidence derived from marine sediments provide a detailed, and fairly continuous, record for climate change. This record indicates decreasing deep-water temperature, along with the build-up of continental ice sheets. Much of this deep-water cooling occurred in three major steps about 36, 15 and 3 million years ago—the most recent of which continues today.

During the present ice age, glaciers have advanced and retreated over 20 times, often blanketing North America with ice. Our climate today is actually a warm interval between these many periods of glaciation. The most recent period of glaciation, which many people think of as the "Ice Age," was at its height approximately 20,000 years ago.

Although the exact causes for ice ages, and the glacial cycles within them, have not been proven, they are most likely the result of a complicated dynamic interaction between such things as solar output, distance of the Earth from the sun, position and height of the continents, ocean circulation, and the composition of the atmosphere.

Between 52 and 57 million years ago, the Earth was relatively warm. Tropical conditions actually extended all the way into the mid-latitudes (around northern Spain or the central United States for example), polar regions experienced temperate climates, and the difference in temperature between the equator and pole was much smaller than it is today. Indeed it was so warm that trees grew in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and alligators lived in Ellesmere Island at 78 degrees North.

We are still in the midst of the third major cooling period that began around 3 million years ago, and its effect can be seen around the world, perhaps even in the development of our own species. Around 2 and a half million years ago, tundra-like conditions took over north-central Europe. Soon thereafter, the once-humid environment of Central China was replaced by harsh continental steppe.

...

Changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a strong candidate to explain the overall pattern of climatic change. Carbon dioxide influences the mean global temperature through the greenhouse effect. The globally averaged surface temperature for the Earth is approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and this is due largely to the greenhouse effect. Solar radiation entering earth's atmosphere is predominantly short wave, while heat radiated from the Earth's surface is long wave. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere absorb this long wave radiation. Because the Earth does not allow this long wave radiation to leave, the solar energy is trapped and the net effect is to warm the Earth. If not for the presence of an atmosphere, the surface temperature on earth would be well below the freezing point of water.

Glacials and interglacials occur in fairly regular repeated cycles. The timing is governed to a large degree by predictable cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit, which affect the amount of sunlight reaching different parts of Earth’s surface. The three orbital variations are: (1) changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun (eccentricity), (2) shifts in the tilt of Earth’s axis (obliquity), and (3) the wobbling motion of Earth’s axis (precession).

In December 1976 they published a landmark climate paper in Science, showing that climate records contained the same cycles as the three parameters that vary the Earth’s orbit: eccentricity, obliquity and precession (shown in Figure 1). Eccentricity describes the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, varying from nearly a circle to an ellipse with a period of about 96,000 years. Obliquity is the tilt of the Earth’s axis of rotation with respect to the plane of its orbit, which changes with a period of about 41,000 years. Precession refers to the fact that both Earth’s rotational axis and orbital path precess (rotate) over time – the combined effects of these two components and the eccentricity produce an approximately 21,000-year cycle.

- see image at link -

However, the scientists realised that there were limitations and challenges of their research – many of which remain today. In particular, they recognised that variations in the Earth’s orbit did not cause the ice age cycles per se – they rather paced them. A certain orbit of the Earth can be associated with many different climates. The one we have today is in fact similar to the one we had during the most intense part of the last ice age.

So how can all this help us understand future climate? One idea is that small increases in greenhouse gases due to the expansion of agriculture that started 8,000 years ago have in fact delayed the next ice age. What’s more, if we continue emitting greenhouse gases at the same rate, we might have put off the next ice age for at least half a million years....

The arrival of intense cold similar to the one that raged during the “Little Ice Age”, which froze the world during the 17th century and in the beginning of the 18th century, is expected in the years 2030—2040.

It is known that the Sun has its own magnetic field, the amplitude and spatial configuration of which vary with time. The formation and decay of strong magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere results in the changes of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, of the intensity of plasma flows coming from the Sun, and the number of sunspots on the Sun’s surface. The study of changes in the number of sunspots on the Sun’s surface has a cyclic structure vary in every 11 years that is also imposed on the Earth environment as the analysis of carbon-14, beryllium-10 and other isotopes in glaciers and in the trees showed.

There are several cycles with different periods and properties, while the 11-year cycle, the 90-year cycle are the best known of them. The 11-year cycle appears as a cyclical reduction in stains on the surface of the Sun every 11 years. Its 90-year variation is associated with periodic reduction in the number of spots in the 11-year cycle in the 50-25%. In 17th century, though, there was a prolonged reduction in solar activity called the Maunder minimum, which lasted roughly from 1645 to 1700. During this period, there were only about 50 sunspots instead of the usual 40-50 thousand sunspots. Analysis of solar radiation showed that its maxima and minima almost coincide with the maxima and minima in the number of spots.

Inspired by this success, the authors extended the prediction of these two magnetic waves to the next two cycle 25 and 26 and discovered that the waves become fully separated into the opposite hemispheres in cycle 26 and thus have little chance of interacting and producing sunspot numbers. This will lead to a sharp decline in solar activity in years 2030—2040 comparable with the conditions existed previously during the Maunder minimum in the XVII century when there were only about 50-70 sunspots observed instead of the usual 40-50 thousand expected.

The new reduction of the solar activity will lead to reduction of the solar irradiance by 3W/m2 according to Lean (1997). This resulted in significant cooling of Earth and very severe winters and cold summers. “Several studies have shown that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the coldest phase of global cooling, which was called “the Little Ice Age”. During this period there were very cold winters in Europe and North America. In the days of the Maunder minimum the water in the river Thames and the Danube River froze, the Moscow River was covered by ice every six months, snow lay on some plains year round and Greenland was covered by glaciers” – says Dr Helen Popova, who developed a unique physical-mathematical model of the evolution of the magnetic activity of the Sun and used it to gain the patterns of occurrence of global minima of solar activity and gave them a physical interpretation.

îä îëéìåú äçãùåú?

Alarmists have been out there yelling about how bad for Earth humans are for a very long time.

We had the population bomb idea.

We had the coming ice age idea - which was probably our fault too.

Now we have the man cause global warming ... changed to "climate change" idea.

"People are bad"

Is the general substrate of these ideas.

The old religion of anti-humanism

"Save the planet, get rid of people !!"

In otherwords, the false premise that anything that deviates from what would otherwise happen in nature without any interference by mankind is necessarily bad. The Earth's ecosphere is not some delicate, easily broken system, it is a vibrant, incredibly adaptive, and resilient one. The underlying fallacious premise that if WE (humans) are doing it, it must be bad, is illustrated by such often repeated/paraphrased ideas:

We are spewing all this Carbon into the atmosphere...and that can't be a good thing (faulty premise)

Al Gore: "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action." - problem here is that unlike a human being which does have a scientifically established, normal "healthy" overall body temperature (within a few tenths of a point of a degree), there is no comparable "normal" or "healthy" average temperature/climate for the planet. Second, there is no debate vis-a-vis the ecosystem being "flame retardent", it is firmly established that it is analogously resilient and adaptive to even globally catastrophic events that put even the most extreme and wackadoo predictions of global climate change into something akin to a mosquito bit versus a bullet in the brain.

1 like

îä îëéìåú äçãùåú?

In otherwords, the false premise that anything that deviates from what would otherwise happen in nature without any interference by mankind is necessarily bad. The Earth's ecosphere is not some delicate, easily broken system, it is a vibrant, incredibly adaptive, and resilient one. The underlying fallacious premise that if WE (humans) are doing it, it must be bad, is illustrated by such often repeated/paraphrased ideas:

We are spewing all this Carbon into the atmosphere...and that can't be a good thing (faulty premise)

Al Gore: "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action." - problem here is that unlike a human being which does have a scientifically established, normal "healthy" overall body temperature (within a few tenths of a point of a degree), there is no comparable "normal" or "healthy" average temperature/climate for the planet. Second, there is no debate vis-a-vis the ecosystem being "flame retardent", it is firmly established that it is analogously resilient and adaptive to even globally catastrophic events that put even the most extreme and wackadoo predictions of global climate change into something akin to a mosquito bit versus a bullet in the brain.

Agreed. Mother nature has survived and adapted to far worse than what humankind has thrown at it, 6 mile wide asteroids, Snowball Earth, Siberian super volcanoes, etc. etc. They all pale in comparison in what the puny humans have, or are ever likely, to have done.

Some heated claims were made in a recently published scientific paper, “Recent Global Warming as Confirmed by AIRS,” authored by Susskind et al. One of the co-authors is NASA’s Dr. Gavin Schmidt, keeper of the world’s most widely used dataset on global warming.

The new paper uses the AIRS remote sensing instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The study describes a 15-year dataset of global surface temperatures from that satellite sensor. The temperature trend value derived from that data is +0.24 degrees Centigrade per decade, coming out on top as the warmest of climate analyses.

A breakdown of several climate datasets, appearing below in degrees centigrade per decade, indicates there are significant discrepancies in estimated climate trends:

AIRS: +0.24 (from the 2019 Susskind et al. study)

GISTEMP: +0.22

ECMWF: +0.20

RSS LT: +0.20

Cowtan & Way: +0.19

UAH LT: +0.18

HadCRUT4: +0.17

Which climate dataset is the right one?

Interestingly, the HadCRUT4 dataset, which is managed by a team in the United Kingdom, uses most of the same data GISTEMP uses from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Historical Climate Network. Among the major datasets, HadCRUT4 shows the lowest temperature increase, one that’s nearly identical to UAH.

Critics of NASA’s GISTEMP have long said its higher temperature trend is due to scientists applying their own “special sauce” at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), where Schmidt is head of the climate division. But what is even more suspect is the fact that while this is the first time Schmidt has dared to compare his overheated GISTEMP dataset to a satellite dataset, he chose the AIRS data, which has only 15 years’ worth of data, whereas RSS and UAH have 30 years of data.

Why would Schmidt, who bills himself as a professional climatologist, break with the standard 30-year period? It appears he did it because he knew he could get an answer he liked, one that’s close to his own dataset, thus “confirming” it.

The 15-year period in this new study is too short to say much of anything of value about global warming trends, especially since there was a record-setting warm El Niño near the end of that period in 2015 and 2016. The El Niño event in the Pacific allowed warm water heated by the Sun to collect, dispersing heat into the atmosphere and thus warming the planet. Greenhouse gas induced “climate change” had nothing to do with it; it was a natural heating process that has been going on for millennia.

îä îëéìåú äçãùåú?

Agreed. Mother nature has survived and adapted to far worse than what humankind has thrown at it, 6 mile wide asteroids, Snowball Earth, Siberian super volcanoes, etc. etc. They all pale in comparison in what the puny humans have, or are ever likely, to have done.

A number of years ago, I read a very good book on the late-19th century eruption of Krakatoa, and how shocked people were that plant and animal life rebounded on the Island so quickly. The Earth and it's ecosystem are not fragile and delicate, it is robust and resilient. Add to that, mankind isn't exactly fragile either, with every passing moment almost, we become increasingly capable of adapting and thriving from changes in the world...if only government stays out of the way.